Little Weirding

I went to this small town for an appointment with my doctor today. It’s half an hour away by train and way outside my normal manor (that’s a south London term for a place where you can behave strangely because people know and tolerate you). Weird it was. I’d say middle class zombies; they all looked vacant and dead but very well dressed. Everyone I passed either made no eye contact or stared at you as if you had fallen through a wormhole from the future.

I wrote recently about the strangeness of abandoned clothes, and here they were again, cast upon the muddy sign of the village green. As if someone had indulged a game of rugby then thrown their clothes off.

At the community hospital I found myself in zombie central. Dozens of us packed into a small waiting room, silent and watchful, as if like crayfish there might be a sudden and vicious attack of cannibalism (crayfish are fond of eating each other if confined together in small places; I got a lecture on them from Strider the other day - unpleasant critters).

The woman administering the clinic was the oddest of creatures, running around with bits of paper, aged about eighty with silver hair and weighing in about the same as a stick of thin celery. On several occasions she would say something along the lines of “Mr Spasm? I called you and you didn’t answer. You’re lucky the doctor is still here". I thought I should tell her I was there in case I too was accused of not speaking up. I was soon ushered into an alcove with two other people where we could hear these continued naming and shamings. "Mr Bunion? Traffic was it? Well other people managed to get here". Scary it was.

The man sitting next to me waited until she had passed and breathed out slowly through pursed lips. "Blimey you need to be tough to come here" he said. At which point Mrs Celery’s head appeared from behind a post where she had a hidden nursing station and glared at him. "Imagine working with her. Not a place for snowflakes" he whispered. Mrs Celery’s head popped out again. "Snowflakes? Don’t talk to me about snowflakes. Last winter it took me two hours to get home one evening because of the snow. So many abandoned cars. Do people check their tyres and have their cars serviced? No they don"t". And she disappeared again.

My companion thought this was quite funny and decided to see what happened with random topics of conversation. "I see they are predicting manned flights to Mars soon" he said loudly. Mrs Celery’s head popped out again. "Mars? I wish. I’d love to get away from it all, Mars would suit me fine. I could get a nice little job running a Costa Coffee. Better than this place". It was then I realised that she reminded me of Terry Jones from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. "Out-patients? Don’t talk to me about out-patients!" she finished off talking about Cornwall. "I’m getting away from all this. I’m going to stay in a tin hut on the cliffs. And if it blows away I’ll just find somewhere else to live". Great stuff.

Seeing the doctor after that was something of an anticlimax.

I went looking for food after my appointment. One cafe offered a veggie sausage sandwich and I asked if the sausage was vegan. I got a strange look and the owner went out back. The chef came and stared at me for a moment through a glass panel in the door and eyed me suspiciously. I ran out and found a lovely little place called Hemingway’s where they did toasted vegan sandwiches and vegan carrot cake. And excellent coffee. But everyone in there looked nervous like it was the only non-zombie part of town.

The rest of the day was given over to chilling and domestics. I considered myself lucky to have got home safely. Although I am slightly worried that Mrs Celery will be staring through the window when I go to draw the curtains later ...